Against the Dying of the Light
by mattmetzger
Summary: Falling in love with a man you met at a hospice for the terminally ill isn't the smartest thing in the world to do, but Jim goes ahead and does it anyway. K/S. Please read all warnings, located at the head of the first chapter.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings: this fic centres around dying and death in a contemporary setting which may upset some people. Character(s) will die in the course of this piece. If, at any time, you need to stop reading, or feel that you cannot begin reading, please trust your instincts. **

**Also, I am willing to generate more light-hearted oneshots (such as those with cats!) as and when people would like them (within reason - every five seconds isn't feasible) to offset what is undoubtedly going to be a difficult piece.**

**This is all the information I will be giving you at the present time. People will die, and it will quite probably hit uncomfortably close to home for some of us. Further details are not forthcoming, but there will be no sudden surprises. You will know well in advance of the actual event which characters are going to die, and how, and why.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009, and I make no profit from this work.**

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><p><em>"Every man dies. Not every man really lives." - William Ross Wallace.<em>

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><p>Sometimes, life threw you things that had to be done, no matter how much like giving up it felt to do them.<p>

That was how Jim felt, sitting in his car and staring at the single-storey sprawl of redbrick building in front of him. It was an obnoxiously sunny day, the grounds bathed in light, and even the welcome sign seeming somehow _rude _in the face of what it _was_.

_St. Joseph's Hospice, sponsored by The David McCoy Foundation and St. Luke's Cancer Hospital_.

He shivered and opened the door.

The hospice - for a hospice - had looked...nice...on its website. It wasn't stupidly expensive - though what did that matter now? - and it was large enough to have many on-site medical staff, but not so large as to be as cold and impersonal as a hospital. The grounds were well-kept, and littered with benches and picnic tables, and he could see the odd patient out with their families and friends.

Enjoying their last days.

After all, St. Joseph's Hospice was one of the worst kinds. Patients came in alive, but not one of them ever left that way. They came in with a variety of things - cancers, tumours, genetic disorders, brain damage, strokes, AIDS, even things as mundane as old age and _time_, mixed with things that would never, ordinarily, kill a man.

St. Joseph's was a hospice for the terminally ill.

And that was why Jim was here.

It was like being in a church - he felt the urge to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible as he slipped past the double doors and into the reception area, which was empty. There were three other doors - one leading into a back room behind the reception desk, and two leading off into other rooms. From somewhere, he could hear a television; in the other direction, the faint bars of some classical piece.

It seemed...obnoxious, to hear evidence of life in here.

Shifting uneasily on his feet, Jim tapped the bell on the desk and immediately felt guilty for the summoning chime. The classical music stopped, and he winced at having disturbed the peace already, having not been here for five minutes.

There were footsteps, and a man appeared.

Not just a man, but a gorgeous man in a white uniform, hands folded behind his back and an impassive, unreadable face staring at Jim with neither judgement, nor pitying welcome. A tall man - Jim's height, but the way he held himself, he seemed to be taller - with a slender physique and a flawless face framed by dark, dark hair and a pair of thin, wire-framed glasses clinging to the bridge of his nose.

A man that, quite frankly, would look a hell of a lot better without the uniform, and had quite possibly just walked straight out of Jim's fantasies.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"Er," Jim fought to get his staring under control. Because a hospice for the soon-to-be-deceased was a really cool place to trigger your libido. Not. "I have an appointment. With, um, Ms. Uhura and Dr. McCoy."

The man didn't show a flicker of surprise - or pity, or anything else that Jim didn't want to deal with. He simply nodded. "I will alert them as to your arrival. May I have your name?"

"Uh, Kirk. Jim Kirk."

"One moment, please."

And then he was gone. And even though he really had to get out of the habit of seeing death in _everything_, Jim couldn't help but compare him to a ghost.

* * *

><p>Uhura was clearly the business and administrative arm of the hospice - she swept through a brief hello and goodbye, before disappearing again to answer a ringing phone and muttering something about 'obnoxious, fantasising government busybodies.'<p>

"Ignore her," Dr. McCoy had said, taking Jim into a small, private office that was apparently the room behind the reception desk. "She gets our funding and our support; the medical staff under me handle the patients themselves."

"And you?" Jim probed.

"I do as I'm told," Dr. McCoy said, and grimaced. "Uhura has quite the arm on her."

Jim snickered, to his own surprise, and some of the weight in the air lifted slightly.

"Look, this goes more or less how you want it to go," McCoy said. "You want a few tours, a few weeks to make your decisions, you go ahead. I don't want anyone signing anything who isn't sure about it. The staff'll be happy to talk to you; so will some of the patients if you pick the right ones...avoid Dr. Puri, he's the bitterest son of a bitch I've ever met, and I'm a divorcee."

Jim stared, and McCoy snorted.

"I don't sugarcoat things, Jim," he said, and shrugged. "Some people like things being all dressed up and shit, and some don't, and I'm willing to bet that you don't."

"Yeah, you'd be right," Jim said sourly.

"Well, there you go," McCoy said. "Some people accept what's coming, and some don't. Puri hasn't, and he makes damn sure everyone else realises that."

"I'll just avoid asking the patients anything, if you don't mind," Jim muttered. "I'd...rather not talk about it."

"Suit yourself," McCoy said lightly. "If you want myself or Uhura to talk to, or explain anything, or show you round, you'll need to book ahead. But if you just fancy a look round, hunt up any of the free staff..."

"What about that dark-haired guy?" Jim asked.

"Huh?"

"The guy who went to find you. Tall, dark hair, polite like it's the eighteen-hundreds?"

"Spock? You mean Spock? Wait, you mean you _want _to talk to him?" McCoy snorted. "Sucker for punishment, you are, if you ask me. The man's about as friendly as a rock."

"So why does he work here?"

"Doesn't; he's a volunteer."

"Same question," Jim parried.

McCoy shrugged again. "Uhura's in charge of staffing and resources, not me. All I know is you're damn lucky if you can get ten words out of him in a day. Counsellor Atkins is just about ready to shoot him; mind you, he pisses off Counsellor Atkins so I guess that makes him alright in anyone's book."

Jim laughed outright then, for the first time since walking out of St. Luke's Cancer Hospital three weeks ago, and McCoy grinned.

"See? No need for a counsellor if you can still find it in you to laugh," he said, then sobered. "Spock's usually around. Good hearing; smack the bell and he'll show up eventually. He's like Lurch or something. And he'll answer your questions if you pin him down with them. But like I said - take your time, figure out what you really need out of this, and then - and _only _then - we'll talk contracts."

"You don't get all booked up?"

"There's always room for one more around here," McCoy said, and his face softened. "You mind if I ask how long?"

Jim swallowed. "Seven months to a year. And...a year is being generous about it."

"Well, look at it this way. You got seven months before you have to make any decisions."

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><p><em>"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it." - Ernest Hemingway.<em>


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: Lawlz, you guys like your punishments, don't you?**

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><p><em>"It hath often been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible." - Henry Fielding, <em>Amelia_._

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><p>Sam called that evening, for the first time since Jim had broken the news three weeks ago. They rarely spoke anyway, but the long silence after that phone call had gotten to Jim, and the caller ID made him itchy for a fight before he'd even answered the phone.<p>

And then Sam was...well. Sam.

Jim hadn't been the most easy kid to handle - and now that he was a little more grown up, and a little more mature, he could admit that his stepfather hadn't had an easy time of it, with both of his new wife's sons out to get him for the crime of not being their father, and his far-too-late attempts to get them both in line. In his newfound maturity, Jim could admit that while Frank would never win a Nicest Man of the Year award, he hadn't been a _bad _man either - just one unused to children, and one who didn't know what to do with two out-of-control, angry, resentful kids that wanted him gone.

But Sam, if anything had been worse than Jim. Jim would break things, would shout and smash things, would stay out until all hours and break the silly, petty rules like curfews and chores. Sam was colder - he outright rejected his father's replacement, and coldly turned away from his whole family in a rejection of them as well.

He walked out when he was fifteen, and when Jim heard from him again, he was twenty-two and in the US Navy. He had embraced his father's image - the dedicated officer who never let anything get in his way - but had turned away from his father's home, his father's wife, and his father's younger son.

For all that Sam resumed contact when he was twenty-two, he never came home, and he was largely uninvolved in their lives. Jim had not seen him since he was fifteen, and emails and letters were hardly a good substitute. He heard, almost by accident, of Sam's marriage and his two (soon to be three) children - nephews and a sister-in-law that Jim had never, would never, meet.

But he had the right to know, and so Jim had told him.

And found himself angered and sadly unsurprised by Sam's excuses.

"I can't get the leave," was the first thing out of his mouth - not even a 'hey, how you holding up?' - and Jim gritted his teeth. "We're going to be on tour through the Pacific until at least May, and then I'm up for grounding in Seoul..."

"So you're not coming," Jim said flatly.

"Jim, I don't like it either but..."

"Sam," Jim interrupted, grinding the heel of his free palm into his closed eye. "Don't give me this. Compassionate leave exists, for God's sake, and they came out with a fucking _date_, like it's a baby, not a tumour! You need to be here, Sam."

"Jim, I _can't_. I'm on tour!"

"This isn't the Second World War!" Jim snapped. "Russia's not going to take fucking Alaska if you take a fucking _month _to..."

"I can't even get two weeks to see Aurie and the kids in Hong Kong, never mind take a month - and it won't be a month, they can't predict this sort of thing this far in advance, Jim! - to fly out to..."

"Aurie and the kids aren't _dying_, Sam!" Jim shouted. "There's a next time for Aurie and the kids! There's no more next time here! There's never going to be a next time!"

"Jim..."

"I'm not asking you to come and hold my fucking hand for the next year! I'm not asking you to quit your job and rush back here to be a caregiver! I'm just asking for you to take some leave and just _be there_. I want you to be there at - at the end."

There was a short silence.

"Sam...even Mom wants you to be there."

Sam sighed heavily; the line crackled momentarily. "Jim, don't."

Jim hung up.

For the longest time, he sat there, phone shaking in his grip, and unsure of what to do. That was the worst thing - there was nothing to do, and, really, nothing that anybody had done. There was nobody to blame, and no course of action could fix things and let everything go back to normal.

All he could do was, really, was useless. He could kick and scream and fight against some invisible enemy, but it wouldn't change the end result. He could sit back, against all his instincts, and watch that same result come in like a train wreck. He could fight with Sam - or his Mom, or his stepfather, or even the ghost of his own father - until their already divided family would never be within a continent of one another ever again. He could even clean up, be responsible, adopt the mantle of the capable man that he could be, and never _had _been, and finally become the young man that his mother had always wanted him to be instead of a hopeless drifter.

But it would _change _nothing.

Jim bounced up from the couch and grabbed his jacket from the armchair. If he couldn't change a damn thing, even Sam's mind, then he wasn't going to sit here and stress over it. Not sober, anyway.

* * *

><p>O'Reilly's was a bizarre hole-in-the-wall bar with a tiny dancefloor and a shit DJ that was somehow constantly packed. It probably had something to do with the constant supply of German beer (proper dark beer from Cologne, with a high alcohol content) and the cheap supply of something that was masquerading as imported Russian vodka, but actually came in kegs from Nashville and had all the delightful properties of paintstripper.<p>

Jim was a regular at O'Reilly's, ever since he'd left Riverside, and had even worked behind the bar for one eye-opening summer. That short-lived career had destroyed his opinions of their Russian paintstripper _and _their cute, busty barmaid. Ignorance really was bliss.

But like most barflies of O'Reilly's, Jim newfound knowledge had done absolutely nothing to keep him away, and so he found himself swaggering in the door as if St. Luke's Cancer Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospice, and _Sam _hadn't ever happened. As if the last six months of endless tests and frowns and fucking _pity _didn't exist.

No, Jim swaggered in, all ripped jeans and leather jacket and the cockiest smirk this side of the Rockies, as if nothing was wrong. He flashed the barmaid his usual smile, and checked out the gaggle of young college girls in the corner like he always did, and turned away when they started giggling inanely, like he always did.

Only when he turned, a flash of pale skin across the bar caught his eye, and he found himself staring.

The man - the tall and handsome man from the hospice - was standing across the bar, a pint of pale beer in hand, talking to a red-faced man wearing a ridiculous hat, a young Asian man about Jim's age, and - of all people to see in a seedy bar - Ms. Uhura.

So much for that plan.

But none of them had noticed Jim, and he leaned against the beer to get a better look. The white uniform was gone, replaced with black slacks and a black t-shirt that hugged the man's chest obscenely. There was something weird about finding someone's _arms _sexy. Jim couldn't say much for his colour scheme - maybe the guy was colour_blind_, because switching from an all-white uniform to all-black casual attire seemed somewhat extreme - but he couldn't fault the tailor.

Jesus Christ, but the guy had a nice ass.

Uhura suddenly laughed, and leaned in to kiss the red-faced man on the cheek. When his arm went around her, and landed somewhat obviously on her ass (which wasn't exactly horrific either, in the interests of pure honesty) Jim's mental sketch of the group dynamics shifted.

When the handsome care worker broke away and walked for the bar, Jim moved.

After all, it would help him forget about everything else for the night.

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><p><em>"Can you still be human if you have no mortal end?" - Christopher Paolini.<em>


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes:**

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><p><em>"What's wrong with death, sir? What are we so mortally afraid of?" - Hunter Patch Adams.<em>

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><p>"It's on me," Jim said, appearing at the man's shoulder as the barman turned to charge him for the pint. "Hey. Jim Kirk."<p>

"Yes; we met this morning."

"So, it was Spock, right? Only you didn't tell me your name."

"I do not believe I did."

"Well, just as well that Dr. McCoy did, or I'd have to make one up," Jim said, flagging down the barman again and getting a refill. "Cheers."

"...Cheers," Spock said, eyeing him with something...unreadable, actually. Damned if Jim knew what he was thinking.

"So, this your first time here?" Jim asked. "Only I would've noticed you."

"No, but I am not a...frequent visitor," Spock said carefully. "If you will excuse me, Mr. Kirk, I am here with friends."

"I saw," Jim drawled. "Don't worry, I'm sure the lovebirds can keep themselves busy for ten minutes. Didn't feel like bringing your girlfriend too?"

Spock rose an eyebrow. "That is a somewhat poor attempt at subtlety."

"So sue me. So. Got a girlfriend?"

"No," Spock said flatly. "Although Ms. Uhura is my former girlfriend."

Jim was brought up short. "Whoa. Wait, and you're just okay with hanging out with her and the new bit?"

Spock's other eyebrow joined its twin briefly, before he lowered both of them. It was kinda weird how much he could express himself through his eyebrows alone, and not move a muscle in the rest of his face. "I did not state how long she has been my ex-girlfriend."

Jim snorted. "Touché. So no girlfriend. Boyfriend?"

"No," Spock repeated calmly, giving no hint as to which side of the fence he was on. And Jim knew he was being played - nobody just stood there and took being hit on so blatantly without having some kind of agenda - but hell if he knew if he was going to get shot down, or taken home.

"No boyfriend, no girlfriend - you wanna watch out. People might start to think that you're available," Jim teased, grinning. There was something comfortable about teasing this man - he was so cool and collected and_ zen_ that it felt like a little bit of a challenge.

"That would not be wholly incorrect."

"Wholly?" Jim quoted. "So, why not 'that's dead on', huh?"

"Being available does not mean that I am looking, Mr. Kirk."

"Jim," he corrected easily. "Well, that's good. Because I'm available, and I'm not looking either."

"Then why the interest in my romantic status?"

Jim shrugged. "I'd like to buy you more drinks, then go back to yours - or mine, I'm not picky - and it's a real bitch getting chased out of a place by the pissed-off girlfriend the next morning. Especially with a hangover."

"I see," Spock said evenly, taking a long drink. "Is soliciting sex from a man you met this morning such a wise move?"

Jim shrugged. "A man who volunteers at a hospice, so is probably a nice guy and not an axe murderer? Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. Especially not a guy as hot as you."

Spock flushed slightly, but that didn't alter his demeanour in the slightest. "That does not change the fact that you and I have not spent half an hour in each other's company."

"Plenty of time to know you're pushing my buttons," Jim drawled. The alcohol was starting to seep in as he drained his glass. He got steadily more obnoxious, the drunker he got. "I've pulled people I've never even spoken to before - you and I are practically dating by this point."

"I see," Spock repeated flatly. "And do your...relationships...end as quickly as they begin?"

Jim shrugged. "Usually. Not exactly in the right headspace for commitment, you know what I mean?"

Spock tilted his head to the left, eyes narrowing as though he were looking beyond Jim's face and into his brain, _reading _him. "I believe that I do," he said, voice softening ever so slightly.

"Awesome," Jim grinned, and held up his empty glass. "So, let's start this off traditionally: can I buy you a drink?"

* * *

><p>Jim woke in an unfamiliar bed, with the sheets tangled around his waist, and face-down in an unfamiliar pillow. When he shifted, muscles that he'd hadn't used in <em>weeks <em>(a record, for him) whimpered pathetically, and he gave up the struggle, peering at the rest of the room from the one eye that was not buried in the somewhat lumpy pillow.

It was someone's studio apartment. Two doors stood side-by-side: one closed, and one ajar, revealing the shiny tile of a bathroom beyond. The rest of the apartment was devoid of life, and largely empty. Three or four boxes were stacked in the kitchenette (marked off by the change from carpet to black tile) and two backpacks sat side-by-side, like infantry soldiers on parade, by what Jim assumed was the apartment door.

There was nobody in it, though.

Levering himself upright, his head wailing in protest, Jim found a glass of water on the bedside table, and a packet of painkillers, unopened. There was also a folded t-shirt, underneath a small note written in a neat hand.

_Jim,_

_My Thursdays are spent at the hospice, and I did not think that you would like to be woken at such an early hour, particularly when your likely hangover is accounted for. I have left you a shirt to replace the one you wore last night. Please feel free to make use of the bathroom and kitchen before leaving, should you desire it._

_Spock._

Hardly a love letter, but after last night, Jim felt that _he _owed the debt. Why the hell Uhura had let a guy who could do _that _with his tongue slip through her fingers was beyond Jim. Even drunk, that was the best damn sex he'd ever had.

So he was polite - while he did take the offered shirt, he left Spock's fridge unraided (also unprecedented behaviour) and his bathroom undamaged: he tugged the bedsheets back into a generally acceptable state, and left much more quietly than when he'd come.

And then his recovering brain decided, while he was in his own shower, to recall every single detail of Spock's dick, and his own demanded some more attention. So it was a long shower - but entirely worth it.

The whole night had been worth it. Fantastic sex and having his brain sucked out via his dick aside, all of his stress and worry and _dread _had been sucked out of him too. Okay, sure, it was temporary - this shit wasn't exactly going to go away, was it? - but it was put on the backburner in favour of Jim's purring libido, refreshed stash of mental pornography, and whatever the hell addictive chemicals the human brain pumped out in response to getting laid.

Man, he'd have to get around to buying Spock another drink someday.

In a fit of consideration, he ran the shirt through a quick wash, and tucked it (still damp, but meh, it was clean) into his messenger bag before ignoring his voicemails from Mom and Dr. Bailey and Mom again, and driving around to the hospice. He was so cheerful that even the welcome sign didn't depress him, or the ambulance that was sitting in the middle of the parking lot, and he caught himself trying (and failing) to whistle as he bounced into the reception area.

"Spock?" he called, ringing the bell. There was nobody around - he suspected that was the norm - and, sure enough, Spock appeared half a minute later, standing in that oddly casual parade rest he used last time. "Hey," Jim grinned. "Thanks for the painkillers, by the way. Knocked my hangover on its ass."

Spock inclined his head wordlessly.

"And hey, uh, this sounds crass, but thanks generally," Jim said, and shrugged sheepishly. "I needed that."

"Then I am glad to have been of assistance," Spock said.

Jim frowned. "Er...you did...you know. You wanted to, right? I mean, you...you know..."

Spock's facial expression somehow softened without actually changing. It was _bizarre _how he could do that. "I would be lying if I claimed to have accepted - and reciprocated - your advances in a purely selfless manner."

Jim laughed, an upswell of relief and light-heartedness taking him by surprise. "See, I don't know how you did it, but I am in a way better mood."

"I believe that can be attributed to..."

"Getting some good old-fashioned stress relief?"

"...As you say."

Jim smirked, swinging his bag off his shoulder. "Brought you your shirt back. Washed it and everything."

"My thanks," Spock drawled - and _that _was sarcastic. Jim knew sarcasm when he heard it. "Am I to assume that this care and attention to my belongings means that I am somehow different from your usual...partners?"

Jim shrugged. "Guess so. Hey, most of my 'usual partners' don't get their shirts back at all."

"Then my sincerest thanks for your esteem," Spock said, definitely sarcastically.

"No problem," Jim said, somehow unable to get the grin off his face for half a second. "Hey, you maybe wanna do that again sometime?"

Spock tilted his head. "I believe I stated that I was not looking for..."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you," Jim waved it off. "But neither was I, and then some freakin' sex demon..." He smirked at Spock's furious blush, and kept going regardless, "...gets dropped into my bed. I'm not stupid. I know a good thing when I see it, and I'm seeing it."

Spock's lips twitched momentarily.

"Is that a yes?" Jim prompted, hands on his hips. "Cos I am totally willing to follow you around all day until you change your mind if it's a no."

"It is a...somewhat bemused acceptance."

"Good enough," Jim grinned. "So. Another bar, another round of drinks, tomorrow night? I have a car. I can come you pick up like a real boyfriend and everything."

Spock didn't _quite _smirk, but Jim knew he _wanted _to.

"I do not believe that this qualifies as being charmed, Jim."

"Yeah," Jim said. "But it's close enough. So - eight o'clock, your place, tomorrow night, with my car keys and an easily removable shirt?"

"Eight thirty," Spock corrected calmly, then openly swept his gaze up and down Jim's body. "And preferably without a shirt."

* * *

><p><em>"Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough." - William Saroyan.<em>


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes:**

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><p><em>"A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own." - Thomas Mann<em>

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><p>Jim was a lot of things, but he was a man of his word, and so he rang for entrance to Spock's apartment at eight thirty the following night, twirling his car keys around one finger and thinking that the feel of the leather jacket on his bare chest kind of explained the whole leather fetish thing in the sex stores.<p>

He jogged up to the second floor when Spock buzzed him in - with rather more stability than he had on Wednesday night - to find the man in question waiting in the doorway. His arms were folded rather than in parade rest, for once, and he was wearing another one of those probably obscene t-shirts.

Scratch that: _definitely _obscene.

"Hey," he said, grinning widely. "Look," he unzipped his jacket halfway to flash his chest hair, then zipped it up again. "No shirt, so we can't wreck anything. I learned from the last round."

"As have I," Spock returned smoothly. "I have changed the sheets for more durable ones."

Jim laughed, and Spock stepped back, waving him into the apartment as though this were part of their routine. As if they _had_ a routine.

"I am afraid that I am running a little late," he said formally. "I will just change."

"Fair enough," Jim shrugged, eyeing his backside and hoping the change would involve even tighter jeans. He stuck his hands in his pockets to avoid the urge to put them in _Spock's _pockets, and glanced around at the boxes. "You just move in?"

"Five weeks ago."

Even Jim didn't quite count that as _just_. The place looked like he'd moved in the night he'd taken Jim home - even his kitchenware was still in boxes.

"And you still haven't unpacked?"

"Obviously not."

"Where'd you move from?" Jim asked, changing the subject. Slightly.

"Seattle."

"Seattle?" Jim perked up. "Really? You don't sound like a northerner - not really."

"I have lived in many states and countries during my lifetime," Spock replied, stripping off his shirt and opening a chest of drawers to look for a new one. Jim shamelessly stared. "I am technically not an American, and I lived in Seattle for only three years."

"Why the move?"

Spock paused.

"Um. It's okay if, you know, it's personal or whatever," Jim backtracked clumsily.

"My mother died," came the abrupt response, and then a word flood: "She had been ill for some time - breast cancer - and I moved to Seattle to care for her. My father is a diplomat and has to leave the country frequently, so I went to care for her in Seattle. It is her home city. She expressed...a wish to...die there, rather than in Washington D.C., where my parents lived at the time."

Jim swallowed, hunching in on himself as the words hit home. It explained his volunteer work in the hospice, it explained his distance, it explained him not really wanting to find a relationship - who would, with that shit? - it explained his ex-girlfriend apparently wanting to socialise with him even in the presence of her new boyfriend...and for Spock to have moved only five weeks ago...

"When did she...?" he whispered.

"Four months ago," Spock replied, and Jim jerked his head up, surprised. "It was a peaceful end. She did not suffer, and for that I am grateful, as much as I...miss her."

"I'm sorry," Jim whispered.

"As am I," Spock said quietly, then turned back to the dresser and selected a t-shirt. "When she passed away, Nyota decided..."

"Who?"

"Ms. Uhura."

"Ah."

"Nyota decided that I should not remain in Seattle alone, and...persuaded me..."

"Twisted your arm until you begged for mercy and moved south?" Jim guessed.

Spock straightened and pulled the shirt over his head. "In essence, yes."

"I have _got _to meet this woman properly," Jim said, trying desperately to lighten the mood. It was obvious that talking about his mother was still painful for Spock; hell, it was painful enough for _Jim_, to imagine what Spock must have suffered through, in watching a long death from cancer of one that he loved. "Maybe she can give me tips on how to twist your arm."

"I believe your technique from the bar works efficiently enough."

"Oh yeah?"

"Relentless flirting and a somewhat strong sexual attraction."

"Oh, I'm _good_."

"As I believe you have already demonstrated."

Jim grinned, the mood sufficiently lightened for him to toy with the zip on the jacket almost idly. "You know, we don't _have _to go out. I'm down with ruining your bed sober. Really, I'm okay with that."

"In which case, it is polite to remove one's shoes and jacket upon entering another's home."

* * *

><p>"You know," Jim commented from the vicinity of Spock's bare shoulder. "I'm kind of surprised."<p>

It was somewhere before midnight. They had not gone out, and so Jim found himself in someone else's bed sober for the first time in a long time, and somehow content to simply curl around a warm body and stay that way. There was something peaceful about it - even if he was sore, and they'd wrecked the sheets again, and he had no clue where his jeans had gone. But who cared? He didn't have anywhere to be, and Spock didn't seem to want to kick him out yet, and they had to lie close enough to share the pillow, which meant being close enough to feel Spock's breathing and the heat radiating off his skin.

He felt alive. Jim felt alive. _They _were alive.

"Surprised?" Spock prompted.

"At this," Jim said. "I honestly didn't think I'd be able to talk you into this."

"This time, or in the bar?"

"Both?" Jim hedged. "You didn't really strike me as the one-night-stand kinda guy."

Spock hummed, bringing a hand up to rest over Jim's forearm, where Jim had flung it haphazardly over Spock's upper chest. His hand was warm, and he brushed the hair lightly in an odd stroking motion, as if Jim were a cat. It felt oddly good, though. Soothing, almost.

"I am...typically not," Spock replied. "However, I have moved to an area where I have very few acquaintances, and I find myself...unwilling to socialise much after my mother's passing. I have ceased to...see the point of it. I suppose she would say that I have been...lonely."

Jim felt a lump rise in his throat, and he pulled himself a little closer.

"I have always been...independent, but I have always had the support of my mother. To find myself without it was..."

"One of the worst pains in the world?" Jim guessed quietly.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"When you approached me in the bar, I was...tired of Nyota's attempts to encourage me to socialise. I was somewhat relieved when you engaged me in conversation that would prevent me from having to lie to her about my wellbeing, and when it became obvious what you sought..."

"You figured 'what the hell' and went for it?" Jim finished, and cracked a small smile. "'Cause I'm hot?"

"Essentially."

Jim snickered quietly into Spock's shoulder.

"I found you attractive when you came to speak with Dr. McCoy, and again in the bar, and I...indulged in a moment of weakness on my part."

"I'd call this two moments. At least."

"As would I."

"Well," Jim said. "You find me attractive, I find you attractive. We're both lonely and could use the distraction and the company and the frankly awesome sex. I've heard worse reasons to carry on doing what we're doing."

Spock's lips twitched. "As have I."

"Awesome," Jim said, curling closer as a new agenda turned into his mind. "Now for a decision. Round three: shower, bed, or the kitchenette?"

* * *

><p><em>"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." - George Bernard Shaw.<em>


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes:**

* * *

><p><em>"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways." - Stephen Vincent Benet.<em>

* * *

><p><em>Dear Jim,<em>

_I'm sorry but it's just not going to be feasible to get time off between Christmas and next August - by which time, there would be little point in taking leave, as I understand it. I really am sorry, but we're in demand here because of the concerns over North Korea and their current and future actions. It would be irresponsible of me to cut my tour of duty short for an extended period right now._

_I know this is probably pointless to say, but please don't get upset about this. You've always been stronger than me, and if I were in your shoes, I doubtless wouldn't be handling everything so well and so calmly. I have every faith that you can face this all with dignity and pride and that kinda shitty sense of humour you got from Dad. I can tell you this: you've done Dad proud._

_I will try to get away in May, if you can keep me posted on the progression of events. I will honestly try - but I can't promise anything. So keep yourself safe and well as you can, and please look after yourself even though it might seem like it doesn't matter._

_Love,_

_Sam._

Jim finished the email and sat numbly for several minutes, blankly staring at the screen. He had spent a week bouncing between clinics and hospitals and second-third-fourth opinions and lawyers and bank managers and more lawyers (why did death require so many lawyers?) and then _this_, to get _this_...

Slowly, he rose from the chair, noting everything in a very detached way until his own mind almost sounded like Spock, with that logical, loose way of observing facts: it was Thursday morning, so Spock would be at the hospice. His jacket was on the back of the couch where he'd dropped it. His car keys were in the pocket, and he would just be catching the tail end of the rush hour.

He was still running on a somewhat alarming autopilot when he stepped into the empty reception of St. Joseph's, and followed the steady bars of classical German music through two sets of doors and along a short corridor until he found himself stepping into an airy lounge, equipped with sofas and several elderly patients and their families - and Spock, seated at an old piano, playing with all the serenity of the Buddha himself.

Spock, who glanced up, took one look at Jim, and stopped. "Jim?" he questioned, already getting to his feet.

"I..." Jim tried, and then all the _everything _that he'd felt reading Sam's email came flooding back and both hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. "I..."

"Come with me," Spock said quietly, hooking a hand under Jim's elbow and leading him swiftly across the corridor and into a small room that held nothing but a sofa and a couple of armchairs. He shut the door firmly behind them, and had only half-turned before Jim secured his arms around that thin waist and locked them there tightly.

"Sam," he said into Spock's neck, and felt the reassuring - soothing, comforting, _needed _- weight of Spock's arms come up around him.

"Who is Sam?" Spock prompted.

"A fucking _dickhead_," Jim spat. He could feel himself shaking, and the anger was burning at his stomach, his lungs, his guts. It was hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to talk around the searing in his throat and vicious heat in his face. "He's my fucking dickhead son-of-a-bitch cunt of a brother!"

"What has happened?" Spock asked quietly.

"He's not coming back," Jim spat, and tightened his grip when Spock shifted. "He's not fucking coming _back_, and..."

"Take a deep breath," Spock said, quite suddenly interrupting him with a firm tone better suited to headmasters than the gentle, clever, _wicked _man that Jim had picked up in a bar last week. Jim was so surprised - jarred by it, almost unpleasantly - that he had inhaled before really registering the command. "Now exhale, slowly."

He did so, and some of the shivering inside lessened slightly.

"Sit down," Spock said, tone gentling again, and arranging Jim on the sofa as though he did this every day. Maybe he did: he slipped off Jim's shoes, lifted his legs to lie across the sofa, and tucked a cushion from one of the armchairs behind his back, with all the easy grace and relaxation of a man used to it. "I will return momentarily. Take slow, deep breaths, and feel free to punch the sofa cushions should physical exertion be required."

He disappeared, closing the door behind him softly, and Jim turned his attention to the breathing exercise, and the continual clench-unclench of his hands. He itched to have them around Sam's _neck_. How _could _he? How in the hell could patrol duty in peacetime be more important than _this_, more important than saying _goodbye_, more important than the very last time they would see each other...

"Here," and Spock had returned, pressing a mug of sweet tea into Jim's hands. He spread a light blanket over Jim's legs before seating himself on the edge of the sofa calmly. "What did you mean by your brother not coming back?"

Jim took a sip of the tea before saying, "He's in the US Navy."

"Ah. And he is on tour."

"Yeah. And when...when I broke the news about...well, you know...well, he said he couldn't get back right away. Which, you know, whatever. He doesn't need to be here _now_. But...but _later_, when..."

Spock folded Jim's free hand into his, and Jim clutched onto those elegant fingers tightly.

"And this morning he basically told me he won't be back until _August_, and he's not even _trying _to get leave because he's got this duty to the navy and some such shit and by August, then..."

Jim's voice broke and he pulled, hard, on Spock's hand. In a moment, the mug had been removed, and he had Spock caught in a fierce embrace, clinging tightly to a man he barely knew in a desperate attempt to receive some kind of comfort and support and fucking _understanding_...

"I'm not asking for the fucking _world_," he croaked, and Spock's fingers brushed the hair at the nape of his neck.

"No, Jim, you are not," he said lowly. "But sometimes it is easier to turn away than it is to lose the ones we care for."

"That doesn't excuse him," Jim croaked.

"No, it does not," Spock agreed quietly. "It does not excuse Sam, and it does not excuse my father, and it does not excuse every other person to choose the same course of action. I would never say that it does - but, sometimes, I can _understand _it. It would be _easier_. Not right, and most likely severely regrettable...but _easier_."

Jim shifted, tucking his face into Spock's neck. "Did your father stay away too?" he asked quietly.

"Yes."

Jim clung tighter, couldn't think of anything to say, and shook his head meaninglessly. After a moment, he loosened his grip and shifted again restlessly. "I just...I don't want to be doing this all on my own," he whispered. "I just want someone to _be _there. I just want someone to...to support me and to help me and...I don't want to have to do this by myself."

Spock's chest heaved briefly in a silent sigh, and he turned his head to press a light kiss into Jim's temple. "You are not alone, Jim."

Jim took a deep breath, the simple words and the simpler action caused something to creak in the middle of his chest, like a rib painlessly snapping against his lungs and puncturing the pair of them, lessening all the pressure that had been building up for three weeks - in reality, longer, for months and months of the tests and the treatments and the endless failures and regressions and remissions and restarts...

For the first time since the very first blood test, in the arms of a man he'd known a week and in a hospice that he would pay any price not to need, Jim Kirk broke down and _cried_.

* * *

><p><em>"I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them." - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.<em>


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes: In which I show my hand. (Also, this will be up on LJ latr, but LJ's just bitchin' at me for now.)**

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><p><em>"Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying." - Polly Toynbee.<em>

* * *

><p>Jim signed the last contract and dropped the pen that felt like it weighed a million tons. Quietly, Uhura gathered the newly-signed papers together and slipped from the office, leaving him alone with Dr. McCoy, whose usually gruff face was, for once, sympathetic.<p>

"Do you need a minute?" he asked.

"No," Jim muttered, rubbing a hand over his face and feeling vaguely as though he had just run a marathon and then been told he would have to do it all over again in ten minutes. "It's just...it's...it feels so final, you know? Like it's...real now."

"Yeah, I hear ya," McCoy said agreeably. "Even when they tell you, and give you a timeline for it, it's still not real. It's not any more real than someone tellin' me I might die in my sixties."

"Until this part," Jim said.

"Mm. Do everyone a favour. Take as much advantage of the support you can get here as possible. I heard about you dragging Spock out of the music room last week - well, anytime you need that, do it again."

Jim flushed. "Sorry I interrupted..."

McCoy shrugged. "Nah, don't be. Especially not on my behalf - I can't stand Wagner."

Jim chuckled uneasily. "Is Spock around today?"

"Should be. We lost one of the patients yesterday, so he'll be out in the memorial garden," McCoy's face shifted slightly. "He sat with her for the last four hours of her life, so he's...been quiet. Even for him."

Jim flinched, guiltily thinking of his crying jag the week before, and McCoy caught it.

"He volunteers," he said crisply. "Nobody makes him do it. And it...makes it easier, for those who haven't got any family to sit with them. It makes it easier for them. Nobody should die alone."

Jim nodded, and left quietly when McCoy waved him out. With that news, the quiet in the hospice seemed suddenly oppressive, as if death lurked in the corners waiting for another victim. He was hyperaware of his own heartbeat, and of the air drawing in and out of his lungs. He breathed deep enough that it bumped his diaphragm, and pushed against his ribs, and wondered whether the dying here could hear the rush of his blood in his veins. In the weight of silence, _he _could hear it - and possibly for the first time.

The memorial garden was a small flower garden, ringed by a low metal fence to mark it apart from the rest of the grounds, behind the main building. With a simple, white-gravel path and a single, solitary bench, its glory was wholly in its flowers: glorious, bobbing flowers of every variety, in the earth, in baskets from the building wall, and in pots along the sides of the path. They were haphazard, jammed into every possible nook and cranny, flooding the garden with a cloying smell and a claustrophobic lack of space. The colours were obnoxiously loud for their purpose, demanding attention and contemplation, even as they were themselves wilting and dying, like the people they represented.

But the flowers would return in the spring; their people would not.

Spock was knelt some twenty metres down the path, planting seeds in orderly rows in the chilly earth. He did not look up when Jim approached, but also registered no surprise when he sat on the path beside him and watched his work in a quiet, mournful silence.

It was only when the last of the seeds disappeared under the earth - like bodies, all like bodies in a newly-dug graveyard - that Jim reached out and eased the gardening gloves off Spock's elegant hands, and grasped them in his own.

"I signed the paperwork today," he said quietly, staring down at their hands where he held them in his lap. "It feels...final, now."

Spock squeezed his fingers and said nothing.

"Would you mind being there?" Jim asked. "It's going to be hard, and I...I could use some support."

"Then I will be there," Spock replied seriously. "I meant what I said, Jim. You will not have to do this alone."

"God," Jim muttered, swallowing the lump in his throat. "How in the hell is it that I've known you for, what, two weeks? Three? And you're still the most supportive person in my _life_? More than my brother, more than my Mom or my stepdad, more than my friends - hell, if I'm being honest, I don't really have any now, not since..."

"You have me."

Jim rose up onto his knees and pulled Spock into a powerful hug, his leather jacket creaking around Spock's frame and jumper, trying to swallow him alive. Through it, he couldn't feel Spock's body heat, or his pulse, or even his breathing - but he could feel his life, in the strength of the returned grip and the shift and sway of muscles as Spock adjusted his position to hold Jim in return.

To _support _him.

"Wednesday," he mumbled into Spock's shoulder. "It'll be Wednesday. Will you be free on Wednesday?"

"I will be," Spock said, his voice leaving no doubt that even if he had appointments to keep on Wednesday, they would be soundly rejected in favour of Jim's need.

"McCoy's arranging a patient transport for one o'clock," Jim continued. "From St. Luke's. So could you meet me there - at half twelve, maybe? Would that be alright?"

"That would be fine, Jim," Spock replied, rubbing a firm hand up Jim's spine.

"Thanks," Jim mumbled. "I'll...I'll pay you back, I swear. I mean, you're taking so much time out of your own stuff to help me, and I really do appreciate it, I do. I'll pay you back."

"I require no such compensation."

"Yeah, but..."

"Jim. You require my assistance, and so I shall provide it. It is as simple as that."

Jim squeezed harder and let go, sitting back on his heels and scrubbing furiously at the tears that had threatened to fall. "Yeah, but I didn't do anything to deserve this."

"On the contrary," Spock said blandly. "Your acquaintance makes my loneliness rather more bearable, I have found. If anyone owes a debt, it is me."

Jim mustered up a smirk for him, but it was weak, so he punched him lightly on the shoulder instead. "Well. Thanks. I think. So, um, Wednesday?"

"I shall be there," Spock replied seriously, then suddenly frowned and tilted his head. "I am curious, however, as to why a patient transport vehicle would be necessary. You are clearly mobile and capable of using the public transport system, or a taxi, if you did not wish to leave your car in the parking lot indefinitely."

"What?" Jim blinked. "Why would...?"

Then the realisation hit. Spock was a volunteer, not a staff member, never mind a nurse or a doctor. And doctor-patient confidentiality laws being what they were, nobody would have told him why Jim was here. He would be working on his own assumptions, and as Jim _himself _had never voiced it - it was too painful to be voiced, usually - then...

"Oh my God," he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe I've been that stupid."

"Jim?"

"Spock," he said, looking Spock dead in the eye and taking both of his hands. "The patient transport isn't for _me_. I'm not the patient."

"You are...?" Spock looked truly surprised for the first time since Jim had met him - possibly, considering the fact that he rarely generated any facial expressions at all, for the first time _ever_. "You are not...?"

"No," Jim said firmly. "I'm not. There is absolutely _nothing _wrong with me."

* * *

><p><em>"Death is a distant rumour to the young." - Andrew A. Rooney<em>


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes: To summarise: Jim is not sick or dying. See below for who is. And please bear in mind that I'm a complete bastard for the duration of this work.**

* * *

><p><em>"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure." - Unknown.<em>

* * *

><p>Spock's face made several shifts, cycling rapidly through multiple expressions and emotions, before settling back into that familiar zen acceptance that Jim knew so well, and projecting absolutely nothing of his final conclusion to Jim - but he did not retract his hands from Jim's grip.<p>

"I'm sorry," Jim said. "It just didn't occur to me that you didn't know. I kind of...you know, I assume that everyone knows because obviously my family do, and Uhura and McCoy do, and...I just kind of assumed that you did too. Stupid, obviously, but...yeah. It's not me."

"Then...?"

Jim swallowed, dropping his gaze to their hands. "It's my Mom. She's...it's..."

"You do not have to tell me."

"It's a brain tumour," Jim blurted out, clenching his jaw. "She...she got sick a few years ago, and they took it out, but it came back, and this time, they can't. They can't operate. And none of the treatments worked, and it won't stop growing, so...so one day..."

Spock's fingers began to rub soothingly over Jim's.

"The doctors reckon she's...she'll go in the spring. That she...she might last until the summer, but..." Jim swallowed hard. "She's not capable of looking after herself, and I can't do it, so...so she needs to be _here_...and it's _hard_. It's hard. My Mom's...she's always been so...so _alive_, and now..."

"And now she is dying slowly, and it is almost as if you can watch the life draining from her with each passing day," Spock intoned deeply.

Jim bit his lip, peering up at Spock from under his eyebrows. "Is that...what it was like when...?"

"Yes," Spock said quietly. "But she did not die alone, Jim, and neither will your mother. And she died knowing, as will your mother, that she was loved."

Jim choked back a sob and threw his arms around Spock again, burying his face in that now-familiar and favourite spot of his neck. Spock seemed unsurprised by the action, folding his arms around Jim firmly again and holding on tightly until the tremors ceased.

"Come with me," Spock murmured, coaxing Jim to his feet and guiding him, an arm around his shoulders, back into the building. In mere moments, Jim found himself back in the small room opposite the lounge with the piano, stripped of his shoes and jacket, and tucked under a thin blanket like a sick child wanting to watch television.

"I should go to the hospital," he protested as Spock tucked one of the armchair cushions under his head. "I need to..."

"You need to rest," Spock said firmly, with no room for argument in his tone. "You are overly stressed and agitated, and while it is understandable, it is detrimental to your health and wellbeing."

And perhaps his pride demanded that he protest - but the rest of him demanded that, for once, he let somebody else take charge. He blinked - and slept.

* * *

><p>Jim woke to a darkened room, a single lamp on the side table glowing dimly, and the faint strains of the piano floating through the closed door. He took a moment to straighten his hair and ensure he hadn't drooled over his own face or something, before slipping out and across the narrow corridor into the lounge.<p>

It was full of people, both staff members in their white uniforms and soft smiles, and patients largely in their pyjamas, situated in ludicrously soft armchairs, or in wheelchairs under patchwork blankets whose colour combinations were an insult to the universe at large. Many of the patients were elderly, and accompanied by family or what looked to be partners. One very elderly woman, ninety if she was a day, smiled at Jim and beckoned him into the room when he paused in the doorway.

"It's Beethoven today," she said.

It wasn't. It very much wasn't. It was, in fact, a fast numbers that Jim guessed was from the 1940s or 1950s, and to his immense surprise, Uhura was singing whatever song it happened to be in a strong, warbling voice that reminded him somewhat of Ella Fitzgerald. She sang, and occasionally would pick on some of the staff or the more mobile patients to dance with her, and Spock played with serene ignorance of her activity, pouring his energy into the piano.

Jim had rarely seen people play the piano, and had always assumed them to move with the music the way violinists or guitarists or even trombonists did. Spock did not: his hands and his body seemed to be independent of each other. His fingers _danced _over the keys, never pausing for a moment longer than they were supposed to, and flitting over the keys as though they commanded him and not the other way around. But his body remained still and upright, spine shot into its perfect posture, and eyes never wavering from the keys. He had no music: he played apparently from memory, and the only sign of life in him was the fluid flicker of his fingers across the black-and-white weights, and the occasional twitch of his foot upon the pedals.

The song died away to scattered applause, and a nurse wheeled in a trolley behind Jim, stacked with plates. He took the opportunity, in the somehow chaotic-yet-organised lull of sharing out meals to approach Spock, who looked up at him from the piano with that same serene blankness.

"Hey," he said, pitching his voice low so as not to be overheard. "Thanks. For earlier."

"You are welcome," Spock replied quietly. "Are you well?"

"I think we discussed that," Jim chuckled guiltily, and perched on the edge of the piano stool when Spock shifted over. "I..."

"Ooh," one of the nearest patients - a woman withered with old age and seated in a wheelchair that had an oxygen tank affixed to the back - piped up excitedly, waving her plastic fork at Jim. "You were here the other week! You interrupted Wagner!"

Jim winced. "Uh, ye-eah, sorry about that."

"Oh, tosh!" she sniffed haughtily. "Good on you! I don't like Wagner. Nasty German music. You should play more French music. French music is _lovely_. Play some French music next week," she ordered imperiously.

"As you wish," Spock said, a tiny smile playing on his lips.

"So," she waved her fork at Jim again. "You. You're not German, are you? You're all blond and everything."

"Um, no ma'am," he said, though a snigger in the back of his head noted that large numbers of Iowan residences were descended from German immigrants. Still, he didn't think that counted.

"Good," she said. "Are you his boyfriend, then?"

Jim went purple in about half a second, and even darker when Uhura, obviously overhearing the entire thing, shot him a smirk from where she was assisting a young man in the transition between his wheelchair and a large sofa.

"Are you?" the old woman demanded.

"Er...yeah?" he said eventually, hoping desperately that this wasn't going to lead to an argument or - worse - sheer _awkwardness _between him and Spock.

"Well!" she puffed up, and the fork zipped around to jab in Spock's direction. "You! You didn't tell me! How am I meant to tell Robert all the gossip if you don't tell me things, hmm?"

"My apologies, Aggie," Spock said, quite seriously. "It merely slipped my mind, and I apologise. It will not happen again."

"You make sure it doesn't," she tutted, and eyed the pair of them suspiciously. "You're not very affectionate, are you? Nyota kisses _her _boyfriend. Come on! Can't have any of this silly nonsense! Pucker up!"

Jim felt like his face was about to explode, but Spock took the entire tirade with his usual serenity; he was clearly used to 'Aggie' and her demands, and he simply turned to plant a swift, chaste kiss on Jim's lips before rising from the stool.

"I only play until dinner," he said. "Come."

Jim followed him out into the main reception - abandoned and empty as usual - and took the opportunity to return the swift kiss with one of his own and a smile.

"She was a bit..."

"That is Aggie," Spock said, by way of explanation. "She likes to know what it is going on in other people's lives, and claims that she would like to take some...gossip...to her late husband upon her death."

"What's wrong with her?" Jim whispered.

"She has had a series of strokes," Spock said. "Technically, she is not terminally ill, but she is aged and has no family left. Nyota...made an exception for her. As she does for you."

"For me?" Jim looked surprised.

Spock's lips twitched. "It is not typical to allow unchecked people to come and go as they please."

Jim flushed a little, and smiled. "Yeah. Well. Thanks. I needed that."

"Yes, you did," Spock said simply.

Jim felt suddenly shy, as if he'd been shown something about Spock that was far more intimate and intense than sexual prowess and a sharp sense of well-hidden humour, and he reached out to catch Spock's fingers in his like a teenager on his first date.

"Come home with me?" he asked.

Spock's hand swivelled in his so that they were stood in the middle of the lobby, holding hands like they'd been ripped straight from some romantic chick-flick.

"Please?" Jim prompted.

"I would prefer to return to my own apartment," Spock said after a pause, and cocked his head. "However, you are quite welcome to join me."

Jim grinned, squeezed his hand - and kissed him.

* * *

><p><em>"For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity." - William Penn.<em>


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes: I am working on yet another long-winded fic, so bear with me a little.**

* * *

><p><em>"Grief is the price we pay for love." - Queen Elizabeth II of the Commonwealth realms.<em>

* * *

><p>Jim's family life had never quite been...idyllic.<p>

The background hadn't been great to start with. Winona was an only child, and while she was born and bred in Riverside, George Kirk wasn't. They had met in their naval training, and married on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Kirks were from Illinois, and so Riverside, where Jim had been raised, was not surrounded by supportive and loving family. The Kirks in Iowa were well and truly isolated from any extended family that _did _exist, and so the loss of one of their own was doubly hard.

To start things off on the wrong foot, Jim's father had been killed in an engineering accident. He had been a naval engineer stationed in Singapore, and had been due, that afternoon, to come off-duty and return to the USA in time for the birth of his second son. In the final hour of his shift, there had been an explosion that had never fully been explained (and which conspiracy theorists denounced as an attack from the Chinese/the Russians/random Singaporean terrorists Jim had never heard of against the US.)

Whatever had caused it, the explosion killed five people, George Kirk among them.

Technically, George had died the day _before _Jim's birth, but the news did not reach his heavily pregnant wife until the next morning, and the shock had caused her to go into labour early. Jim was born that afternoon, after a panic-striken and difficult labour, and on a day that was permanently one of loss. Despite the technicality, Jim's birthday had always been treated as the day that George Kirk had died.

His mother was a grieving widow with a young son and a newborn baby, and it had never really gotten any better. Although Jim did not remember, of course, he had been an infant whose mother was unhappy and detached, and it had affected their familial bond until he was an adult.

The weak bond was then coupled with the fact that Winona Kirk simply wasn't around much. She was also a naval officer, and had resumed her duties when Jim was six months old. For the first seven years of his life, he didn't see much of his mother.

And yet, Jim hadn't missed her much. Where other people did not miss their often-absent aunts and uncles, he did not overly miss his mother. He and Sam lived with their mother's parents just outside of Riverside, and were taken religiously every month to see Grandma Kirk, who spoiled her only grandchildren utterly rotten. Those hadn't been, despite Winona's infrequent appearances, at all bad times.

But then his grandparents had died - Jim couldn't remember this happening - and the boys had been hastily packed off to Grandma Kirk's until their mother could return. But Grandma Kirk was old - _very _old - and had made it clear to Winona that she could not look after the boys in the long-term.

So Winona had resigned.

Until Jim was eleven, his mother had suddenly been his primary caregiver, and he had adored her. Winona Kirk was a woman who didn't take any shit from anybody, and lived life to the full. She would organised spontaneous day trips and snow days when there wasn't any snow, and took a keen interest in her son's lives.

And then, at one of Sam's hockey matches, she'd met Frank Carter.

Frank, in retrospect, hadn't been a _bad _man. In a way, Jim somewhat regretted never giving him a chance - but Sam, who _did _remember George Kirk, hadn't wanted a replacement father, and Jim followed religiously in Sam's teenaged footsteps. They had raised all kinds of hell at the presence of their mother's new boyfriend, and when she had married him, Sam had issued his first threats of running away.

Frank just hadn't been the kind of guy who was remotely interested in children, and he and Winona had divorced before Jim was really old enough to appreciate this. He had not been interested in raising children, and had done the bare minimum. He fed, watered and clothed them, and would drive them to school and back, and check that they were in bed at the right time, but that was about all.

Then after Sam ran away, he hadn't understood why Winona was so upset, and they had divorced less than ten months later. Jim hadn't been sorry to see the back of him.

And for another few years, it was simply Jim and his mother. In the absence of Sam and Frank and Jim's father, they had bonded and become remarkably close, before work had enticed Jim to leave Iowa behind altogether.

Then Winona had fallen ill.

Jim had not been living in Iowa any more, and hadn't known a thing until he returned for a visit at Christmas and found her with a headscarf to cover her bare scalp. She had informed him matter-of-factly, with all the optimism in the world: "It'll be fine, Jim! It's not like those horrible golf ball sized ones you hear about in the news! They'll whisk it out, and there you go! This isn't the fifties."

They had whisked it out, not long after his visit, and for a while, everything had been fine. She had gone back to her life and her friends and her job, and Jim had almost forgotten about the whole thing. People _did _recover from cancer. For all the statistics, there _were _the lucky ones, and Winona Kirk was one of the lucky ones.

Until the following autumn, when she'd developed crippling headaches and her memory had started to shake under the strain, and she'd been taken back into hospital. Another tumour had cropped up, in a much more risky place, and it was quickly decided that surgery wasn't going to be possible and they would have to hope that they could kill it chemically.

In short: they couldn't.

By the time the second tumour was determined to be terminal, Winona had barely been able to understand what was going on. She had long since moved to be under Jim's watchful eye, and had been hospitalised permanently for the three weeks leading up to the decision. Jim had been making her legal decisions for _weeks_.

She was not, most of the time, his mother anymore.

Oh, she still had moments of lucidity. Much like an Alzheimer's patient, she would have moments where she knew what was happening, and where she was, and who she was, and who everybody _else _was. But more and more often, she did not. The worst times, she would call Jim by his father's name, and ask when Sarah was coming - and Jim didn't have any idea who Sarah was.

He hated himself for it, but he had been visiting less and less often, unable to take the misery of looking at his mother and seeing a complete stranger look back at him. It was torture, to watch the strongest woman he had ever known _dying _in a hospital bed, and to know that she would be dying there for months on end before the tumour finally stopped dragging it out, and let her go.

Their relationship had never been perfect, but they loved each other, and Jim genuinely loved his mother despite her mistakes and the holes that had been left. Maybe they weren't as close as some mothers and sons, but he _loved_ her, and to watch the demise of that powerful, strong woman was _painful _on a very deep, basic level.

And Wednesday was, no matter _how _Winona was behaving, going to be one of the hardest things that Jim would ever have to do.

* * *

><p><em>"The desolation and terror of, for the first time, realising that the mother can lose you, or you her, and your own abysmal loneliness and helplessness without her." - Francis Thompson.<em>


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes: I deeply apologise for the wait on this! Like, wow, I did not intend for so much time to pass. Sorry!**

* * *

><p><em>"The whole world is watching: you haven't come this far to fall off the earth." - Jack's Mannequin, 'Swim.'<em>

* * *

><p>Spock was so punctual, he was outside the hospital main entrance by the time Jim pulled into parking lot and swore at the patch of ice that tried to kill him on the short stretch of sidewalk. December had just broken, and Jim thought that Spock looked somewhat strange, bundled up in a heavy coat and his hands trapped in heavy-duty, very expensive-looking gloves.<p>

"Hey," Jim said shortly, his own anxieties about today making his voice brisk and almost harsh, and he winced. "Sorry. Sorry, I'm just..."

"It is quite alright, Jim," Spock said, and waved him into the hospital first.

They did not speak on their way through a maze of corridors and up several storeys in two different elevators, and by the time they came close to the women's long-term care wards, on the seventh floor, Jim had clamped up completely, his jaw working against the tension in his chest.

The ward was called Aqua, because some paperpushing moron somewhere in the universe had decided that wards should have nice, pretty-sounding names, despite the complete lack of _any _evidence to suggest that they actually improved the odds of any patients whatsoever. And wards like Aqua were inescapably depressing, no matter their name or colour scheme.

Aqua was the terminal ward. Its patients went back to their families or to various hospices to die, or died in Aqua itself shortly after being admitted. It had never had a cured patient in its existence, and its size reflected that. In the biggest cancer hospital for miles around, the Aqua ward consisted of six beds and a tiny nurse's station, and was permanently half-empty.

As they drew up to the door, Jim spotted Dr. Robau inside, with a couple of nurses and a glimpse of the white uniform of the hospice, and paused, taking a long, deliberate breath before opening the door and marching in with a smile pasted on his face, so as not to worsen whatever mood it was that Winona had picked for the hour.

He stepped around her crowd of professionals, and she smiled up at him, and his heart _twisted_.

Winona Kirk had never been a _tall _woman - both sons had towered head and shoulders over her at sixteen, and her wedding photographs (of both weddings) had looked faintly ridiculous under the height difference. But in that hospital bed, she wasn't just short, but _small_. She looked tiny: frail and delicate and unnaturally thin, with her hair only just beginning to grow back in. The thick gold - just like Jim's hair - was gone, and in its place floated gentle wisps of white.

The _power _in her was gone. The power and strength that had hummed beneath her skin, that Jim had heard in her heart even when he was still small enough to be picked up and cuddled and not think it _weird _and _icky_ - it had melted away from her, bleeding out in a thousand little wounds and words until this frail, frail woman with the enormous blue eyes in a skeletal face beamed up at him from the hospital bed and said:

"George! There you are, darling! Tsh, you just can't arrive on time, can you, dear? What was it this time? Traffic? That arsey lieutenant of yours? I swear I'm going to smack him in the mouth..."

"Just traffic," Jim lied, kissing her on the cheek and turning to Dr. Robau. "Is she ready to go?"

"It's just until the baby's born, isn't it, George?" Winona asked, then turned to the female orderly with a big smile. "We're having a baby. We've tried so hard, but we're finally going to have a baby. I want a boy, but George wants a little girl."

They hadn't tried at all. They'd gotten drunk on their first anniversary and both forever had a police caution over indecent exposure that, years later, Winona would have laughed about. Sam had technically begun to exist at three in the morning in a rural Iowan police station.

But the orderly didn't miss a beat, and engaged Winona in stories of her own two small children, and Jim took the opportunity to sign the last of the paperwork that the doctor shoved under his nose, and try to ignore that his mother, once again, thought that he was somebody else.

Still, she was in a good mood, and Jim only had to fabricate a vague lie about having taken some time off before he could stand back and allow the orderlies to situate her comfortably in a wheelchair with an offensively-coloured blanket and a slightly ridiculous number of cushions.

"Oh!" Winona exclaimed, suddenly turning her head and staring at Jim again. "Jim, when did you get here? When's Sam getting here?"

"Sam just called," Jim lied. "He'll be along soon. Traffic."

"He should leave the house earlier then," Winona sniffed, and beckoned her younger son for a hug. Her grip was weak, nothing like the rib-creaking hugs Jim had gotten used to, and she smelled of antiseptic and detergent. "Has your father gone to bring the car around?"

"Let's get you downstairs then, Mrs. Kirk," the young blonde orderly interrupted, saving Jim from a possibly more awkward lie - or worse, the truth about why Winona could not possibly think that her adult son and her living husband were anywhere near one another. "We're going to the hospice in the patient transport bus - Jim's going to follow us in his car, aren't you, Jim?"

"Sure," he said, and Winona - for once lucid enough - accepted the explanation with a smile.

"You tell Sam to hurry up!" she called over her shoulder as the woman wheeled her out, and the doctor smiled sympathetically at Jim.

"I stick by my previous estimate, Mr. Kirk - longer, if the staff at St. Joseph's live up to their usual expectations," he said, and stepped out.

A warm hand settled on Jim's shoulder, and he turned to hug Spock lightly and take a steadying breath.

"Jim?"

"I'm alright," he muttered. "It's just...it's difficult when she thinks I'm _him_."

"She recognises you in some incarnation, and that is something to be thankful for."

"Yeah," Jim mumbled. "I s'pose." He hesitated, then tentatively asked: "Did _your _Mom...know?"

There was a long pause, but when Jim tried to pull back, Spock resisted, and he relaxed and let himself be held for a moment.

"Not in the...final weeks," Spock said quietly.

"I'm sorry," Jim breathed.

"...As am I."

* * *

><p>When Jim's car pulled up in the parking lot of the hospice, however, it was quite clear that there was trouble.<p>

Despite the cold weather, Winona was sat in her wheelchair on the path to the lobby, arms folded and glowering at her son as he stepped out of the car and approached her. The orderlies hovered nervously in the background, along with Ms. Uhura, who looked supremely unruffled.

"James Tiberius Kirk, you explain yourself this _instant_!" Winona hollered, the moment he was within a hundred metres.

The woman might have had an inoperable brain tumour, and a slipping grasp on reality, time or her memories, but her lungs were having no such problems. Quite suddenly, Jim felt all of five years old again, and being shouted at down the phone line for misbehaving at Nana's house.

"Mom, we talked about this..."

"A _hospice_? We talked about no such thing!" she shrieked. "For God's sake, Jim, I'm ill, not _dying_! The surgery's Tuesday and then everything will be fine! This is _ridiculous_!"

One of the orderlies winced and shot Jim a sympathetic grimace.

"Bring the car around," she ordered. "We're going home this _instant_!"

"Mom, I can't look after you in my apartment. I can't look after you at _all_, that's why..."

"I don't need looking after!" she exploded. "This is _silly_, Jim! I can look after myself, and I don't need to pay somebody else _ridiculous _amounts of money to do it for me! Get the car."

"Look, Mom..."

"Get. The. _Car_, James!" she snapped, and she _never _called him James. The last time he'd been James, he had also been sixteen years old and had just set his school gymnasium on fire. Deliberately.

And then Spock stepped forward, cool as you please, and interrupted the entire argument. Which was something Jim had noticed that the staff and volunteers tried_ not _to do.

"Mrs. Kirk, I believe there has been a misunderstanding," he said smoothly. "I am a friend of your son's, and when he informed me of your unfortunate illness, I arranged for you to take advantage of one of our available rooms at the hospice. I assure you, nobody is paying 'ridiculous amounts of money' to take care of you. We simply felt that as nobody currently requires these rooms, and it is only to help you rest and prepare for your surgery next week, there would not be a problem."

She blinked up at him, the anger deflating out of her with every breath, and eventually glanced between Jim, Spock, and the building to her right.

"Just until Tuesday?" she demanded.

"Of course, Mrs. Kirk," Ms. Uhura jumped in, as smoothly as Spock had just lied through his eye teeth.

"And it's _free_?" she demanded, glowering at Jim.

It most certainly wasn't _free_, but Jim nodded anyway, slipping a hand into Spock's elbow and squeezing it. Hard.

"Hmph. Well. I suppose it's rude to turn down such a nice gesture - but Jimmy, you should have _told _me!"

"I was sure I did," Jim defended himself feebly, even as the blonde orderly from earlier saw her chance and latched onto the handlebars of the chair.

"Let's go and get you settled then, shall we, Mrs. Kirk?" she asked cheerily.

"Oh my God, I owe you one," Jim breathed lowly as his mother was turned towards the building. "I owe you _two_. Three!"

"You may wish to specify what it is that you owe me."

Ensuring that everyone was safely out of earshot, Jim leaned up and whispered, "You, me, a few too many and a bed the size of Kansas," before darting off after his mother, and completely missing the somewhat bemused look that Spock offered him in return.

* * *

><p><em>"I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different." - T. S. Eliot<em>


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes: Nothing much to say here, hm. Carry on!**

* * *

><p><em>"If you should die before me, ask if you could bring a friend." - Unknown<em>

* * *

><p>Jim quickly settled into a visiting routine that, not coincidentally, allowed him to see his mother and Spock in the same trip. He would usually show up on a Monday morning and stay through lunch, and come again for Thursday or Friday afternoons, and hang around until Spock's shift (did volunteers really <em>have <em>shifts?) ended. Sometimes they would go out for a drink; sometimes they would go straight to Spock's apartment and fool around for a bit amongst the boxes he _still _hadn't unpacked.

"You'll have to actually move _in _someday, you know, instead of just leaving things in boxes," Jim said one Thursday night, lounging on Spock's bed completely naked and watching him investigate the contents of the fridge, almost-as-naked. (Apparently he had some thing about not going near food with nothing on. Jim was going to have to introduce him to whipped cream.)

"It is easier to organise one's belongings if they are already in boxes," Spock returned.

"Well played," Jim snickered. "But seriously, _everything _in boxes? What about your work clothes?"

"I am an editor for an international science magazine. All of my work is done at home, alone. I do not require work clothes."

That - plus the visual feedback of Spock in boxers - wasn't really helping Jim concentrate on their conversation. Not that he ever really did.

"You work naked?"

"I did not say that."

"You did!"

"I...implied," Spock said carefully, glancing over his shoulder at Jim. It was an incredibly sexy look - his hair was still ruffled from Jim's enthusiasm earlier, and his glasses were halfway down his nose. He looked somehow sharper and softer at the same time.

"Well, if you're going to make implications like _that_, could you at least make them over here?" Jim asked plaintively.

"I do not believe that that course of action would bring us any closer to eating."

"Oh, I'd eat," Jim grinned, and Spock made an expression like he desperately wanted to roll his eyes. "Okay, okay, fine. What's on offer?"

"Unless you wish to partake in vegetarian cuisine..." Jim made a face, and Spock raised an eyebrow. "...then nothing."

"So. Takeout or restaurant?"

Spock opened his mouth to reply, but Jim interrupted before he could.

"Or," he said, sitting up and grinning. "We could go to _my _apartment. Unlike _you_, I keep my fridge well-stocked. And my freezer. Pretty sure I have vegetarian lasagna around somewhere."

"Why would you...?"

"Hey, you're not the first vegetarian I pulled," Jim smirked. "It's a...safe bet. So? C'mon. You need a guarantee? Okay: I swear I will not drug you and tie you to my bed and keep you as a sex slave." Then he smirked: "Well. I'll let you back out to do your volunteering. Maybe."

"How generous," Spock said. For a man whose speech patterns were utterly devoid of changes in tone or pitch, he did _sarcastic asshole _very well.

"Can I confiscate your clothes when we get to mine?" Jim asked, wriggling into his own jeans and leering as Spock bent over to pick up his shirt.

"No."

"Spoilsport."

Jim snuck in an extra hickey before Spock managed to get his coat on, and floated down to the car full of smug satisfaction that was probably palpable to everyone within a hundred yards. When Jim Kirk got laid - never mind knew that round two was on the agenda - everybody knew about it.

Spock simply raised an eyebrow at him and said nothing.

Jim lived halfway across town from Spock - roughly the same distance from the hospice, but in entirely the opposite direction, and in a distinctly bigger block. Spock's apartment block had maybe ten apartments; Jim's had somewhere in the region of forty-five, and most of them young professionals like Jim who wouldn't be staying very long. As such, nobody bothered to really fix the apartments up, and nobody complained about the broken things because they wouldn't have to put up with them for very long. Jim was fairly sure that the fire doors at the end of the fourth floor hadn't actually been able to open since the place was _built_.

(So, in the surprise of the elevator actually working, Jim took the opportunity to molest Spock in-public-but-in-a-private-space and worked him out of his coat before they reached Jim's floor.)

He had forgotten, however, the difference between his place and Spock's.

Spock's apartment was tidy, boxed up and ridiculously _neat_.

Jim's...wasn't.

In fact, Jim's apartment looked like a bomb had hit it.

Which was impressive: Jim's apartment was not studio like Spock's. His front door opened into the living room, which had four further doors for the bathroom, kitchen, guest bedroom and master bedroom. So much of the destruction was hidden from their vantage point at the front door - and yet it still looked like al-Qaida had taken exception to it.

Jim's couch was covered - absolutely _covered _- in newspapers and magazines and books, strewn haphazardly over it. His coffee table was in a similar state with a DVD collection that spilled over onto the carpet and began to form little piles, as though it were reproducing and spawning daughter cells composed of DVD-case molecules. Every square inch of the walls was hidden, covered up by posters and dog-eared photographs and random sheets of music and even advertisements for movies that Spock had never heard of. The floor was covered in similar items - music sheets, scraps of paper tickets, bags and boots and clothes, an umbrella spread out to dry in one corner, and the daughter-cells of the DVD collection inching quietly toward the open bathroom door.

"Let me get your coat," Jim said brightly, pulling Spock's coat from his arms and tossing it over the back of the crowded couch. "Well, this is me. Don't touch anything that's dusty because it's probably not safe. Other than that, _mi casa es su casa_."

He ushered Spock into a kitchen - cluttered, but thankfully _clean _- and produced two ready meals from the freezer with as much gusto as though he'd produced a five-star meal fresh from Bangkok.

"I'm no chef," he shrugged, turning on the oven. "I know you're probably into all your health food and..."

"I am vegetarian, Jim, not a cook," Spock corrected, leaning against the counter. "I am accustomed to pre-prepared food. My father was too busy with work to spend time learning to cook, and my mother..." his lips twitched. "As much as my mother was a talented and determined woman, those skills did not extend to the kitchen."

"How bad?" Jim grinned.

"One of my earliest memories is of my mother attempting to reheat a curry in the microwave in our home in Hong Kong," Spock said, eyes sliding sideways as he accessed the memory. The half-dazed look was alluring, and Jim inched closer almost unconsciously. "I would have been about four at the time and my mother had decided that it would be illogical to waste leftovers of the previous night's meal. I remember sitting at the kitchen table and watching the result."

"Which was...?" Jim prodded, still grinning.

"The curry exploded, and the microwave door was blown off."

Jim creased up laughing, vaguely aware of the embarrassing and undignified snort that escaped his nose and mouth, but unable to prevent it. He could almost imagine a three-year-old Spock staring, completely bemused, at the totalled microwave and deciding that his mother should never try to cook again.

He managed to get hold of himself when the oven dinged, and he had to exert enough control to put the food inside and set the timer. His manic laughter had reduced to a small, genuine smile by the time he dropped the oven gloves back onto the counter, and Spock tilted his head quizzically.

"Is something the matter?"

"No," Jim said. "It's...it's nice you can talk about her, you know? I mean...it's not exactly been years, has it, but you don't...you don't _hurt _when you're reminded of her?"

Spock went quiet, folding his arms over his chest and staring blankly into the middle-distance for a moment. After a beat, Jim slid his arms around his waist and frowned at him.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"No, you are right," Spock shook his head. "It _does_...hurt, to remember that I have lost her, but I also...cherish the time that I had, and part of me is glad that she...went first, so to speak."

"Went first?" Jim questioned.

"My father has a heart defect," Spock said simply. "One day, it will prove to be fatal, and I am grateful that my mother has been spared that pain."

"But...didn't your father hurt when he lost her too?" Jim asked.

Spock's face closed slightly, and he stiffened. "He did not seem to."

"Whoa, okay, got it," Jim said hastily. "Your issues with your Dad are off limits. No problem. What about your siblings?"

"I am effectively an only child. My father has another son from a previous marriage, but we have not had any contact in years. Sybok is much older than I, and was wholly uninterested in a younger brother. As was I in an older one."

"Kind of like me and Sam, then," Jim said sourly, then shook his head and tightened his grip around Spock's waist. "Still. You got me, and I got you. That'll do, right?"

"That would depend."

"On what?" Jim asked suspiciously.

"On whether or not I am permitted to stay the night."

Jim _smirked_.

* * *

><p><em>"All would live long, but none would be old." - Benjamin Franklin.<em>


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes:**

* * *

><p><em>"We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everywhere." - Tim McGraw.<em>

* * *

><p>"Hello?"<p>

Jim opened his mouth to reply, and winced as Spock coughed - loudly and harshly - down the line.

"I guess that answers my question."

"Which would be?" Spock croaked.

"Whether you got it too," Jim groused. "I woke up with the mother of all colds, and I figured I'd better check I hadn't screwed it into you as well."

There was a pause, as if Spock didn't quite know what to do with that statement, before he said: "Are you well?"

"Miserable. And snotty. And hacking a lung. Like, seriously, lungs aren't meant to do that."

"I believe that they are."

"Smartass," Jim grumbled. "Is there anyone at the hospice where getting a cold would be a shitty idea?"

"...I believe so, yes."

"Shit," Jim screwed up his face. "I'll have to cancel my visit to Mom. _Shit_."

"I am sure she will understand. Regardless, she has taken a...liking to Nyota, and Nyota is at work today."

Jim blinked, processing the implication. "You mean you're not?"

"No. I am not feeling well."

Jim made a vaguely sympathetic noise, but it might have just sounded like a not-very-manly squeak. "You wanna be miserable together?"

"Jim, I..."

"No sex or anything - not if you're not up to it. Not sure _I'm _up to it, if you can believe that. No, just, like...hang out together or something. Keep each other company. We can go through my epic, epic DVD collection."

Spock hesitated; Jim could hear his clogged breathing and just _knew _that he was winning.

"Come on. Come eat crappy frozen meals and laugh at those stupid sci-fi shows with me."

"...Alright."

"Awesome," Jim grinned. "You remember how to get here, or you want me to come and pick you up?"

"I am sure that I can make my own way."

"Sure you can," Jim smirked. "Number 22 until you hit that skanky little Chinese takeout. I'll come meet you off the bus. Text me when you get on it - I know the timetable."

"An excellent skill," Spock deadpanned.

"Jackass. Just get on the bus."

* * *

><p>It was cold. Scratch that, it was fucking <em>freezing<em>, and Jim huddled in his coat as the bus drew up to the stop. It would be Christmas in a week and a half, and all the weather channels were complaining about the fact that it felt like the middle of January. In, like, _Canada_._ Northern _Canada.

"Is colder back home," a boy with a cup of Starbucks crap said, grinning cheerfully at Jim. "Is snowing back home."

"Where's home?" Jim asked.

"Moscow."

Jim groaned, and shook his head. The boy just laughed at him, and it put a vague grin on Jim's own face, which only widened when Spock stepped off the bus with dignity, despite the fact that he looked as cold as Jim felt. He was carrying a rucksack over one shoulder, and slipped a little on the ice.

"Whoa. C'mere," Jim said, hauling him with an arm wrapped around his waist. "No ice in all those foreign countries of yours?"

"No," Spock replied flatly.

"_None _of them?" Jim prodded.

"None of them," Spock confirmed. "I lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia for nine years. There is precious little ice to be found that does not come in a glass, with some kind of drink."

Jim laughed delightedly - Spock's sense of humour showed up at the _weirdest _times - and grimaced when it turned into a cough. "Sorry. I think I'm taking the prize for snotty and disgusting."

Spock made a faint sound that _could _have been a chuckle. Might also have been a derisive noise; hell if Jim knew.

"Come on," Jim tugged him in the direction of Jim's building. "You're shivering. I bumped up the thermostat. And I have takeout menus for later. And a _bed_."

"_Jim_."

"Just for sleeping and lounging," Jim scoffed. "What do you take me for, some kind of sex fiend?"

"Frankly, yes."

Spock didn't dislodge his arm, though, and seemed quite unperturbed by the funny looks last-minute shoppers were giving them. It was a nice change, if odd, from the guy who was so reluctant to give Jim any kind of hint in public. Oh, he'd never pushed Jim away - but Jim could tell he didn't particularly liked being touched in public. (Or _pawed_, as one of Jim's more charming ex-girlfriends had put it.)

He even let Jim leave his arm where it was when they got into the elevator, where there was most definitely no treacherous all-American ice. Jim wasn't stupid, and he was pretty sure it was just because neither of them were feeling all that hot, so he decided not to push his luck. Maybe if he treated this turn of events (turn of treatment?) wisely, Spock would let him do it in public more.

Once in the apartment, though, all bets were off.

Jim used to have a ritual when he was sick: junk food, DVDs, and the couch. He always had blankets in the vicinity of the couch (because they were much more comfortable then beds when you were sick) and whenever he'd been sick and seeing someone, he'd wheedled his way into getting them onto the couch with him. (Hadn't always worked, but he'd always _tried_.)

With Spock, he was merciless, figuring that if Spock worked out what he wanted too soon, he'd get turned down: so the moment the apartment door was closed, he was stripping off Spock's coat and pushing him to sit.

"Shoes off," he commanded, shedding his own extra layers. In the short walk to the bus stop and back, the apartment had considerably warmed up, and his coat was beginning to leave a puddle on the carpet.

"Jim, what are you...?"

"It's a cold cure," he said. "Works, all the time. Swear on my _grave_."

"That is a somewhat odd oath, considering that you do not _have _a grave," Spock replied, then cocked his head. "At least, I hope you don't."

"That'd make you a necrophiliac," Jim teased, sticking a DVD into the player before seizing a blanket off the armchair and returning to the couch. "C'mere."

"This is your cure?"

"Well, it cures the feeling miserable and shitty part," Jim said, tugging until Spock eventually stretched out on top of him, pressing his lean body into the back of couch and resting his head on Jim's shoulder. He began to relax as Jim shook out the blanket and draped it over them, and the menu for some unrecognisable, old (and therefore terrible with hammed-up acting) science fiction show began to roll on the screen.

"I believe you have exaggerated how ill you feel."

"Feel? Sure," Jim shrugged. "I'll admit that. I don't feel _too _bad - apart from the pounding headache and my lungs trying to escape. But this is a cure."

"I do not believe..."

"Spock! It'll work."

* * *

><p>Jim woke to the ending credits of the third DVD they had attempted to watch, and grimaced as he realised that his aspirin had worn off. His head felt cloudy with his rising temperature, and there was a distinctly uncomfortable itch in his throat, but at least he didn't feel shivery like he had when he'd woken up that morning.<p>

He pressed his nose into the dark scalp at his shoulder and grinned. Spock was _out_. Like, out for the count, _out_. For all the sex and nights over, Jim hadn't really been able to watch him sleep before - not _really _- so this was an odd treat.

He'd heard all the romantic crap about people looking more open and vulnerable when asleep, but while he could appreciate that Spock's _position _was pretty vulnerable (one arm under him, one arm tucked around Jim's chest , and his head jammed under Jim's jaw...yeah, pretty exposed) his face wasn't. Or what little Jim could see of it wasn't, anyway. It looked just as blank as always.

His hair wasn't too badly ruffled and he'd lost his glasses somewhere along the line, though Jim reckoned his face would have some pretty epic pillow creases from Jim's button-down shirt when he woke up, and his breathing was slow and even and...okay, it was hitching slightly from his cold, just like Jim's probably was if he thought about it, but it was _peaceful_.

Jesus Christ, Jim had it _bad _for this guy. And he'd picked him up in a fucking _bar_. After meeting him in his mother's _hospice_. That had bad idea written all over it. Or really, really shit rom-com that even Carol wouldn't have been able to strong-arm him into watching. Or _both_.

It was a godawful idea. Trying to start up a relationship in these circumstances was quite possibly the worst idea that Jim had ever had, _including _the one when he was five and decided to scientifically prove, via replicating the circumstances, that putting a cape on enabled you to fly. He should back out _now_ - or at least back _up_, get back to the drink-and-screw that had been his original intention, and...

One of the hitches turned into a wet cough and, though it subsided quickly, Spock shifted and tightened his grip on Jim.

Nah. This was good too.

* * *

><p><em>"In an ideal world I would like to be alive until I am dead." - Sir John Harvey-Jones.<em>


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes: I just started a philosophy paper on the evils of death. How apt.**

* * *

><p><em>"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain.<em>

* * *

><p>Christmas Day, that year, was simultaneously utterly heartbreaking and entirely heartwarming.<p>

Jim had known the moment he'd signed the contract that he'd be spending it in the hospice with Winona. He turned up just after eleven, just in time to help the orderlies get her into her wheelchair and move her into the lounge, which had been lavishly decorated with expensive decorations - and how did one make it festive, when it was a place of death? He was more than a little impressed.

He was also surprised to find Dr. McCoy and Miss Uhura both swirling around the place in a well-practised dance to see to everyone's needs in the absence of the volunteers (who, of course, would not commonly volunteer to work Christmas _Day_) without, apparently, a trace of annoyance at having to work that day.

"My other option is my apartment and gettin' my call to my daughter rejected," McCoy informed him flatly. "This _is _the better option."

"Well, that sucks," the elderly Aggie offered, and Jim was hard-pressed not to start sniggering.

The decorations seemed to consistently remind Winona at least what the occasion was, and she was friendly with the staff as they came and went, even though she would use a different name each time. She didn't call Jim by his father's name, but did seem to think Sam was around somewhere, and occasionally even asked after her grandchildren, whom she had never actually seen.

"They'll be by this afternoon, Mom," Jim kept saying, and his list of swearwords for his brother kept getting longer.

Spock showed up just after one o'clock, as the Christmas lunch was being served, and Jim didn't actually notice his arrival for a while, he blended into the routine so smoothly. When he did notice him, he tracked his movements with his eyes for several minutes before Winona tutted and tapped him on the back of the hand.

"And when were you going to tell me, hmm?" she asked.

"Erm..."

"I know that look on your face, Jimmy! Oh, don't look so shocked. I knew about Gary Mitchell, you know. You never had _me _fooled - your brother, perhaps, but not _me_," she chuckled, and her gaze slid sideways. "Hmm. Do you think Sam's going to muster up the courage to actually ask that woman out?"

"Aurie? I'm sure he will, Mom."

"Hmm," she turned her head to stare at the blinking lights on the Christmas tree, and frowned. "Oh."

"Mom?"

"This is my last Christmas."

She said it very matter-of-factly, and Jim swallowed against the lump in his throat. "Mom..."

"Oh, Jim, don't," she murmured, passing a weakened hand over his hair as though he were a small child again, crying from nightmares and asking to crawl into bed with her. "Don't do that. It's alright. Everybody has to die eventually, you know."

"But not _yet_," Jim said.

"I gave it my best shot, but that doesn't mean you win," she sighed. "I've tried, Jim, I really have. I tried to be a good mother. I know I wasn't always very good at it - what did I know about raising children? But I tried. And if you're the result, then maybe I didn't do too badly. You're a good man, Jimmy. You're a good man, you're a kind man, and you've been a wonderful son to me. I know it can't have been easy, and I know I didn't always make the right choices for you, but I always loved you."

"I know," Jim swallowed hard and took her hands in his. "I know you did, Mom. And I love you too."

She smiled - it was a wide, tragic smile in a wasted face, all open honesty and vulnerable fragility. She was dying, and that smile was from beyond the grave. "You're a brilliant man, you know," she murmured. "Just like your father. You were too bright, too brilliant, too beautiful for me to hold onto for very long. You had to make your own way, and you did it, and you've become an absolutely wonderful young man. You'll be alright, Jim. And that makes it so much easier for me. You'll be fine."

"That doesn't mean I don't still need my mother," Jim muttered. "I'm not brilliant, Mom, I screw up and I get pissy and I'm..."

"You're just like me," she chuckled quietly. "You're imperfect and you're all rough edges and you're just like me. But you'll be fine, Jim. I've always been proud of you, you know. Except when you set the school gym on fire."

He chuckled wetly and she laughed, turning her gaze back to the tree as if hypnotised.

"Do they have Christmas in Australia?" she asked suddenly. "Sam needs a Christmas too."

"Sam's not in Australia anymore, Mom," Jim prompted quietly, and scrubbed at his tears with his sleeves before she could see.

"Oh, that's right," she paused, and added: "George is in Australia this month, isn't he?"

"Sure. Sure he is."

The Christmas lunch was brought around shortly afterwards, and some trite CD recording of old Christmas songs from the thirties that Aggie insisted upon playing was set up, and Jim slipped out of the lounge once Winona was engrossed in making sure that the turkey was _quite _dead. (That, at least, was normal for Mom.) He successfully cornered Spock alone in the corridor near the garden, kissing him on the cheek in greeting.

"Merry Christmas," he murmured. "You're a saint, you know that?"

"I hardly classify as..."

"You are. You're volunteering on Christmas _Day_, never mind how good you've been with Mom. And me," Jim leaned in for a proper kiss, resting both hands on Spock's shoulders to balance himself and feeling the rasp of air in his chest. Wait, _rasp_? He eased back and frowned at the dark circles under Spock's eyes. "You okay? You're looking...I dunno. Peaky."

"I am fine, Jim," Spock said smoothly. "I have simply not quite recovered from the cold."

"Oh," Jim bit his lip. "Hey. Come home with me tonight? Or I'll come back to yours if you want to go your apartment. It's Christmas."

"What does the time of year have to do with your invitation?" Spock sidestepped.

"Christmas sex. Duh."

"I see."

Jim snickered and pressed his nose to Spock's cheek, sliding his arms comfortably around his neck. And it _was _comfortable, to just stand like this with him, quiet for a moment in the hectic, heartwrenching _rush _that was Jim's life lately. Nothing could bother him here, with the gentle rasp of Spock's breathing close to his ear and the faint jump of a pulse point in his neck. _Life_, in a place of death. How weirdly ironic.

"Merry Christmas, Jim."

* * *

><p>Christmas was truly celebrated, for Jim, at half past eight in Spock's apartment, with homemade pasta bake (which was surprisingly good considering that Spock had confessed to a family history of poor cooking skills) and a long and leisurely session of sex in Spock's bed, in which Jim's higher brain functions were utterly wiped and would probably not return before New Year. He came down off the high wearing a ridiculous smile and petting Spock's hair and face with clumsy, almost numb fingers, his nerve endings shaking under the onslaught.<p>

"How d'you do that?" he mumbled as Spock got rid of the condom, and only received an indulgent half-smile in reply. "Seri'sly. You blow my mind."

"I blew nothing," Spock said flatly, and Jim laughed aloud at the double entendre.

"Fuck, you're amazing," he mumbled, winding his arms around Spock's upper body in a tight hug and increasing the pressure until Spock settled over him and relaxed, like a living, breathing blanket - warm and subtly moving and _alive_, so alive. "You're amazing. Where'd I get you from?"

"A bar, and one too many drinks," came the dry response, and Jim snickered into ruffled dark hair.

"Lucky me," he murmured sleepily. "If I wake up in the night, could I coax you into another round?"

"I'm sure that could be arranged. Although I must point out that it is I who is lucky, not you."

Jim snorted. "Whatever. Liar. 'M so lucky for you."

He dozed off to the rhythmic rub of Spock's fingers over the back of one shoulder, and that steady breathing in his ear.

_Lucky_.

* * *

><p><em>"Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live." - Saul Alinsky.<em>


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes: Yesssssh.**

* * *

><p><em>"Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualise a world without death!...Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil." - Charlotte Perkins Gilman.<em>

* * *

><p>Jim was woken by loud, constant, <em>grating <em>coughing.

The moment it pierced the fog of sleep that clouded his brain and eyes, he was bolt-upright in the bed. Spock was perched on the edge of it, head hung between his knees and having some kind of attack, a metal grating whine every time he inhaled piercing by a horrific _grinding _sound with every single hack. His entire frame was trembling, as was the bed, and the muscles under his bare back stood out in harsh detail, tense and taut like the iron cables of a suspension bridge.

"Jesus _Christ_," he muttered, rubbing one hand over Spock's back firmly. "Spock? You okay? You need anything - you got an inhaler or anything? You need a doctor?"

Spock managed to shake his head, visibly fighting to bring the coughing under control, and Jim worried at his lip uncertainly.

"Come on, try taking a slow, deep breath," he coaxed, pressing his hand firmly into Spock's back and beginning to move it slowly and deliberately, like he'd seen people do in those crappy hospital drama programmes. "Nice and deep. That's it, and another. Another."

Gradually, the coughing eased off, and the muscles under Jim's hands began to relax again. Spock's face was sheet-white and tense, and Jim kissed his temple soothingly as he hesitantly straightened up.

"That's not normal for a cold, Spock," he said. "You need to see a doctor."

Spock shot him a funny look. "It is not severe enough to warrant..."

"Spock, you couldn't _breathe_!"

"Jim," a hand came to clasp over Jim's gently. "It is fine. There is no need for concern over the matter."

Jim pulled a face but resettled, still rubbing a hand over Spock's back until the muscles began to slowly unknot and relax again. He was still very pale, and after a while, Jim kissed his shoulder and began to herd him back under the sheets, curling around him and rubbing at his arms insistently. "You don't half get _cold_."

"I..."

"Spock. This is _not _just a cold. You need to see a doctor. You haven't been looking right for the last _month_."

Spock was very definitely giving him an odd look now. "Jim..." he began, but broke off to cough again into his hand, although not as harshly as before.

"You got any cough medicine?"

"Nothing that is effective...however, I do have some painkillers in the bathroom cabinet."

"Painkillers?" Jim's eyes widened, and Spock touched his ribs lightly. "Oh. Okay."

"They are in a blue bottle."

"Okay, be right back," he scooted off the bed, kissed Spock's exposed forehead, and darted across into the bathroom.

Spock's bathroom was surprisingly large considering the size of the rest of the apartment, and lived-in. The bathroom boxes had clearly been unpacked at some point: the counter was covered in shaving apparatus and shower gel bottles, and the shelf in the shower held no less than three bottles of shampoo. The 'cabinet' was quite obviously behind the mirror, and Jim prised it open carefully, the tiny hook not really made for, you know, average human-sized fingers - and stopped.

The cabinet had three shelves. The top contained two toothbrushes in their packaging, a tube of toothpaste half-used, and a box of new razorheads. The bottom contained a bottle of mouthwash - and every other inch of the cabinet was _crammed _with drugs. Blister packets, bottles, boxes, with fresh and aging labels, and a wide variety of them at that. Most of them heavy-duty, hospital-issue drugs - and some of which Jim _recognised_. He'd seen some of those names before; hell, he'd seen over half of those names before...

A cold, cold feeling was beginning to creep into his spine, gripping at each individual bone as it travelled north and lodged in his throat. With shaking hands, he took the described blue bottle and staggered back out into the main room.

"Jim? Jim, what is it?" Spock sat up in the bed and reached out as Jim nearly collapsed onto the mattress.

"Spock," he said, gripping the other man by the arms tightly. "For the love of God, tell me you're some junkie or something. _Please_."

Spock took the bottle from him, setting it on the bedside table, and stared at Jim blankly. It was quite plain that he had absolutely no idea what Jim was talking about, and then something _shifted _behind his eyes. "Jim...what _exactly _did Dr. McCoy tell you that I am?"

"He said you volunteered," Jim breathed.

_"Oh_."

_"_Spock, _please_. You...you just volunteer, don't you?" Jim was begging, and he knew it - but damnit, this was excuse enough to beg! "_Please_. You just volunteer, don't you?"

"Jim, I do volunteer there - but in time, I will also become one of their live-in patients."

"Oh _God _no," Jim choked, and dropped his head onto Spock's shoulder. The sickening cold was spreading, rattling its way into his lungs and limbs, choking off his breathing and swelling up his heart like a balloon about to burst. "No, no, no, no..." This couldn't be happening. This _couldn't be happening_. This was all just a bad dream, there was _no way that this was happening_!

"Jim, I am sorry," Spock murmured, brushing a hand through Jim's hair and enveloping him in a tight hug as though it would protect him from the news. "I am so very sorry. I was sure that you had been _told_."

"Nobody fucking told me this!" Jim exploded, then retreated back into clinging to Spock's torso. He could hear that raspy breathing over his tears, could feel the too-cool skin, and wondered how he'd missed it. The man had lived in Washington for years, how the _hell _had he still found it cold to be in the USA all the time? He was too thin, and he was always chilly, and the way Uhura _looked _at him sometimes, and her insistence that he come south to be close to friends...

He hadn't wanted to look.

"Jim, please believe me, I honestly thought that you knew," Spock was still murmuring, pitching his voice to be low and soothing. "You agreed with me when I stated that to begin a relationship would be unwise under the circumstances, and you did not seem surprised by my father's heart defect..."

"Is...is that what it is?"

"Partially."

"Partially?" Jim sniffled, sitting up and folding his legs up under him. "Tell me. Tell me everything. Tell me what the fuck is going on here."

Spock took a deep, shaky breath. "I have lung cancer, Jim."

_Lung cancer_. Cancer-cancer-cancer, it was always fucking _cancer_! What was it with cancer and taking away Jim's people - why the _fuck _did cancer have the right to do that?

"L...lung cancer."

"Yes."

"But...you've not received treatment. Not since I've known you."

"No," Spock agreed. "It has been a recurring problem for much of my life. I was...first diagnosed in my early teens; I had several small tumours growing in my left lung. They were successfully treated and removed - until fourteen months later, and then they returned. When I was twenty-two, it became much more aggressive and I was forced to undergo extensive surgery to remove the tumours. At that point, it was discovered that I have inherited my father's heart defect and it made the surgery...difficult."

"How bad?" Jim whispered.

"I flatlined four times in a single surgical procedure," Spock delivered flatly. "The stress on my circulatory and respiratory systems was almost too much. I spent nearly a year in hospital. The surgery removed the tumours, but strained my heart to the point where it was decided that any more would kill me."

"And...and then the cancer came back," Jim whispered.

"Yes."

"Oh _God_."

"I was initially treated, but once again it was discovered to be resistant to the therapy. Surgical intervention would have been a possible cure, but I cannot undergo surgery and given my history, it is likely that it would only be a temporary cure. I elected to...allow the cancer to progress. It is a slow-building illness, and does not yet interfere much with my daily life, whereas the surgery would have killed me, and quite probably over a period of weeks in hospital. I preferred to live what little life I had left."

"Oh my _God_," Jim choked, the tears spilling again, and he lurched forward to cling to Spock tightly again. "Oh God, no, no, no, no..."

Spock made a low, strange sound in his throat, and Jim felt himself being very slightly rocked, like a mother soothing a distraught child, and it only made him cry harder. This man had poured so much time and effort and _care _into helping Jim through his problems and his mother's problems, and yet all the time, there had been a ticking clock over their time together. All the time, there had been a cut-off point. _All the fucking time_.

"How...how long?" Jim whispered into Spock's damp shoulder.

"...Months, yet. Judging by the fact that I am only now beginning to experience respiratory distress, perhaps another ten months, even a year. It is difficult to tell how quickly the cancer is progressing."

"A-and therapy does nothing?"

"Not any more."

"Oh God," Jim sniffled.

"Jim...I should have ensured that you knew. I left it to my assumptions, and for that, I deeply apologise. If you wish to cease our association..."

"_If I wish to what_!" Jim snarled, straightening and _shaking _him like a doll for a moment. "Are you fucking _stupid_? Are you absolutely out of your fucking _mind_? I've just been told I only get a year with you, tops, so I can cut my losses _now_? What the fuck is wrong with you? Jesus _fuck_, Spock, I don't know about you, but I want to make the fucking _most _of that year! I want to...I want to...I just want _you_, that's..." he broke down again, dragging Spock into another desperate embrace, pressing fleeting kisses over his neck and shoulder as though he were going to disappear then and there. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going...I'm going to make the most of it. Of you."

There was a pause, before Spock's arms closed firmly around him once again, and Jim let go and burst into hysterical, unashamed tears.

* * *

><p><em>"Death ends a life, not a relationship." - Robert Benchley.<em>


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes: Some of you saw that coming and some of you didn't. Either way, I'm not sorry. I _am_, however, very sorry for the delay in updating. Those of you who follow my other works will know that life is...well, kicking me in the balls right about now.**

* * *

><p><em>"We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down." - Ellen Gilchrist.<em>

* * *

><p>Jim cried until his throat hurt, his jaw hurt, his nose hurt, his eyes hurt - everything between his scalp and his shoulders <em>hurt<em>. Breathing through the tears and the snot and the general _wetness _of a crying jag, his lungs began to rival Spock's for creepy noise-making skills before he finally managed to get the tears under control and quieted, exhausted, in Spock's grip.

"You..." he croaked, and swallowed. "You should take some of those painkillers."

Spock pressed a kiss to his hair - a shockingly affectionate gesture that told Jim just how long and how hard he'd been crying - before untangling himself and going to the kitchen units for a glass of water. In the cold light filtering in through the curtains, he was _thin_ - perhaps it was Jim's new knowledge, but he was suddenly thin as opposed to lean, all angles and bones instead of the slender grace Jim had been acquainted with.

Disease put a new spin on everything.

"When did you..." Jim cleared his throat and tried again. "When did you stop...treating it?"

"Approximately one year ago," Spock replied. "I was left severely drained after an aggressive four months of treatment, and decided that as it was quite apparent I could do nothing to prevent the disease from spreading, I would rather die..."

Jim choked, and Spock came back to sit on the bed with him.

"Jim," he said quietly, "I am sorry for my oversight, but...I have had time to come to terms with this. It has been quite apparent for...years, that the lung cancer would eventually succeed. I have battled for many years and I am simply...tired."

_Tired_. Jim's mother had said the same throughout months of fighting and fighting and...and losing.

"Will you...will it hurt?" he whispered.

"Perhaps at the very end," Spock said quietly. "It is rarely as bad as it is supposed to be. I have seen other patients die in various hospitals and hospices throughout my life; they could still be made comfortable at the end."

"I don't want you to suffer," Jim whispered, twining their fingers together. A vague, shocked numbness was creeping into his own lungs, and beginning to leak out around his heart. "I don't...I don't...oh God..."

Spock deftly swallowed two of the pills from the blue bottle before placing it and the glass aside, and folding himself back into the mattress and around Jim again, wrapping him in warmth. That pulse point was jumping in his neck again; he was still _alive_. Still..._there_.

"I'm going to lose you," Jim whispered, his voice cracking, and he clung on, burying his face in Spock's shoulder. "I'm going to _lose _you."

"We all have to die, Jim," Spock murmured, rubbing a hand up Jim's back soothingly. "It is entirely possible that you are killed in a car accident before my illness ever comes to its final conclusion. It is entirely possible that _I_ will be killed in that car crash. This...estimate is by no means a guarantee."

"But it kind of really, really increases the odds," Jim hissed, screwing up his face. "When are you...did they say...?"

"It is still too early to tell," Spock said, guessing at Jim's question. "I do not expect this to be my last Christmas, Jim."

"You'll outlive Mom."

"...Yes."

"So I'll lose Mom, and then I'll lose you, and then...and then what? Then Sam'll get it too?"

"That would be statistical clustering."

Jim choked out a wet laugh, torn between hysterical amusement and...simply being hysterical. He burrowed deeper, pressing his face into Spock's chest and feeling his ribs contracting and expanding, feeling the unnaturally loud rasp of the air in his lungs, feeling...

"Your heart," he whispered.

Jim wasn't a doctor, but he knew the sound of a human heartbeat, and they didn't...

It sounded almost as if Spock's heart were hiccupping. _Du-dum-hic_, almost. It was an odd, muted sound, as if the muscle were performing an aborted twitch sideways before resettling into a familiar pattern - only to hiccup again a brief moment later. It was an eerie sound, a strange sound, a...in the light of the new information, a frightening sound.

"Can't they fix your heart?" he whispered.

"I do not believe any doctor would risk his license in the attempt," Spock said dryly. "It was only detected after my first major lung surgery, and that procedure damaged it very badly. It is now almost certain that I would be killed in an attempt to fix it."

"Why...why didn't they find it earlier?"

"I do not know, Jim," Spock said quietly. "In the end, it would not have mattered. If they had known, they would not have operated in the first place. The end result is the same."

"But...a transplant, maybe?" Jim pushed, still listening to the hiccup.

"The waiting list is long, and considering the fragility of my own heart and lungs, and the recurring cancer, it is unlikely that even a successful transplant would achieve more than a few extra years," Spock said quietly. He spoke matter-of-factly, and Jim knew that he'd been speaking the truth: this was nothing new or frightening to _him_. "I would rather that someone else were given the chance, someone who would be able to live for many more years."

"But you _could_."

"But it is unlikely," Spock said firmly. "I would be unlikely to survive a transplant either, Jim, and I would rather die under my own terms and in a setting of my choice than in a hospital operating theatre, alone."

Jim raised his head and peered at Spock's face, frowning. "That's it, for you, isn't it? You don't want to die alone."

Spock's face twitched. "I...had always assumed that my mother..."

"Oh God, you never expected your mother to go before you did," Jim whispered.

"No."

Jim couldn't imagine that position. Even before his mother had become ill, it had always been a very vague knowledge in the back of his mind that he would outlive her. It was just...natural. It was what children did: in the end, they buried their parents. He was young, relatively healthy, and didn't do anything with enormous personal risks; in the end, he would stand at his mother's funeral. It had just been one of those facts. Not one that he liked, and certainly not so _soon_, when Winona herself was still so _young_, but...a fact.

For Spock, _that had not been a fact_.

He had been so ill for so long, _his _fact had been that he would never live to see _either _parent die. And then he had - his mother had fallen ill and died, gone _before _him, and that had never been a fact in Spock's world.

"What...what about your father?" Jim whispered.

Spock's face tightened. "He will not come. I do not wish to disturb his work for this."

Jim felt a bit sick at that implication, but he pressed on. "What about your father's heart? How long does he have?"

Spock almost shrugged; the muscles under Jim's body shifted slightly, but stilled before it truly happened. "It is unknown. He will most likely live into his sixties or seventies, and suffer a heart attack of some description. It should not cut off his life so...early, but..."

"He's still going to outlive you," Jim guessed.

"Yes."

"And...and he wouldn't...?"

"He did not arrive in time to see my mother before she died, and made it clear at the funeral that he will not enter the United States again," Spock said flatly. "He will not be in attendance at my own passing, and I would not wish him to be."

"Okay, okay, I'll drop it," Jim said, taking the hint, and scrubbed the last of the tears from his own face. "I will, though."

"You will...what?"

"I'll be there," Jim promised, pressing a kiss to the skin over that hiccuping heart - that _death sentence _lurking in Spock's chest. "I'll...I'll be there when you go. You won't have to go alone. I promise. You won't go alone."

Spock closed his eyes. For a moment, Jim feared that he'd said the wrong thing, and then a ripple of tension loosened in Spock's bones, and he let out a faint sigh that sounded..._heartbroken_, and had Jim reaching to hold him tightly.

"Thank you," Spock whispered, and Jim pressed his face into the lean neck and inhaled deeply.

There was nothing more to be said.

* * *

><p><em>"Death ends at least the fear of it." - Edward Counsel.<em>


End file.
